by Kennedy Graham
Image courtesy scoop.co.nz
Kipling was unwittingly flattering when he described Aotearoa New Zealand (well, Auckland, actually) as “last. loneliest, loveliest”. This week, we continue to qualify as, simply, last. And it’s lonely at the bottom.
That’s where Action Aid, a global aid institute, ranked New Zealand among 22 donor countries for our lamentable performance in delivering on sustainable agriculture and hunger alleviation. Action Aid is a respected international development research institute based in South Africa, with offices also in Kenya, Thailand, Brazil and Brussels. They are experts who know what they are doing.
In its 16 October report (“Whose Really Fighting Hunger?”) New Zealand came in last (equal) on sustainable agriculture, second-to-last (equal) on social protection, and last (equal) on climate change programmes. And, last overall.
Brilliant. If that were our performance in rugby, all coaches and most players would get the axe as they slept. After a prolonged period of national mourning, there would be a revolution in strategy, organizational planning and programme selection.
New Zealand has long prided itself in our foreign policy for pursuing, endearingly coy as we are to admit it, a peerless brand of enlightened internationalism. We do not enjoy being offered objective evidence to the contrary. We tend to shoot the messenger – more in anger than sorrow.
We responded in that way on race relations, when UN experts queried our domestic record. And on our nuclear-free policy, when our voting pattern at the UN on nuclear disarmament was queried.
In aid, we have always been conflicted. Not only are we one of the smallest donor countries, but we have been one of the most miserly. In terms of size of our aid programme, after struggling up to 0.52% of Gross National Income in the mid-70s, we have since slumped to below 0.3% – under both National and Labour governments. The agreed UN target is 0.7%. Measured as a fraction of our economic size, it is a true litmus test of our generosity (read enlightened self-interest), relative to other donors. On this, we are 6th from bottom.
But we have always told ourselves that it was the quality of our aid that mattered. And, with our unique cultural understanding of our Pacific neighbours, we could ensure a proper delivery of our aid especially into that region.
That myth has now also been debunked. Action Aid’s report, reflecting a rigorous methodology, gave New Zealand 7 marks out of 100 for our overall performance, with a grade of E, and last place. Among the conclusions were the following un-Kiplingesque comments:
On sustainable agriculture:
The scorecard reveals that, with the exception of the top three donor countries – Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway – most OECD countries do not fulfil even half of their expected fair shares required in 2012. The worst performers for ODA contribution are Italy, Portugal, Greece, the US and New Zealand, giving less than 20% of their fair share of the total.
On social protection:
What is more, our scorecard reveals that most rich countries are reneging on their commitments to finance a more ambitious fight against hunger. Despite signing up to UN ‘halving hunger’ goals in 1996 and again in 2000, donor countries reduced official aid to agriculture from 16.8% of all official development spending in 1979, to just 3.4% in 2004. Greece, Portugal, Italy, the US and New Zealand are the worst offenders. And their contribution to expanding social security programmes remains negligible.
On climate change
Achieving global food security also demands that industrialized countries move faster to tackle climate change. Experts estimate that food production could drop by as much as 50% by 2020 in parts of Africa. That is only a little longer than ten years away. Almost all rich countries are defaulters on this front, doing too little to cut their own emissions and giving too little to underwrite adaptation and mitigation costs in developing countries, but Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US rank bottom.
Concerned over these judgements by a respected global institute, I raised the matter in the House yesterday. I asked the Foreign Minister what he thought. You can read the exchange here.
The Minister was absent but the Government reacted in predictable manner nonetheless. It shot the messenger. Not me, though they may have wished it. Action Aid. Its report, you understand, was “flawed in a number of respects”.
We really ought to mature as a nation to the point where we can acknowledge shortcomings in what we do. That is the first essential step to self-improvement.
I shall be writing to the Minister asking for his more articulate views on the report’s flaws than the monosyllabic grunts conveyed on his behalf yesterday.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Featured | Health & Wellbeing | Justice & Democracy by Kennedy Graham on Wed, October 21st, 2009
Tags: hunger, Overseas aid
More posts by Kennedy Graham | more about Kennedy Graham
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Like or Dislike:
4 
7 (-3)
No surprise here, but plenty of shame! A farming nation that can’t help 3rd World countries become sustainable agriculturally .. because we don’t practice it ourselves!
Like or Dislike:
8 
2 (+6)
Like or Dislike:
8 
2 (+6)
Like or Dislike:
2 
2 (0)
Like or Dislike:
3 
1 (+2)
Now we are importing our dairy stock feed (palm oil fodder) from Indonesia? If we were told that twenty years ago we’d laugh.
How will this be in twenty years time? Importing food from third world countries?
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
Back in 1969 when some complained about the cost of sending man to the moon when there was the world’s poor to help, it was pointed out we had the wealth to help the world’s poor and send man to the moon, but those with the wealth chose not to do so.
The issue is will, we choose not to help those in need.
Personally I hope to find that maybe some good will come out of National’s intensity approach, if in mitigation (to our resulting Kyoto obligations falling on the taxpayer) Labour later increases our foreign aid (credits) to .7% to help them adapt to clean technology development. Perhaps if we follow the Oz line on intensity now, they can follow our lead on that later.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
0.7% of GDP is 0.7% of GDP, regardless of where we stand in the OECD GDP rankings. We need not be miserable bunch.
Like or Dislike:
1 
1 (0)
Like or Dislike:
3 
6 (-3)
Go back to your Heine-hole!
Like or Dislike:
2 
1 (+1)
There is useful information about just what we do fund from NZ Aid’s budget, but very little sign that the whirlwind mid-winter break actually did more than fund an enormous crew to fly aound in an Air Force Hercules being feasted and entertained.
I’m sure that the Government attitude to the report by Action Aid was very much coloured by hurt feelings that their full-colour glossy PR magazine was not taken as serious reporting by the agency …
Like or Dislike:
2 
0 (+2)